


Fairy Dust

by vailkagami



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Victor is the best skater ever, inaccurate depiction of figure skating, with little hurt and a lot of comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-29
Updated: 2017-08-29
Packaged: 2018-12-21 11:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11943393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vailkagami/pseuds/vailkagami
Summary: The season Victor spends coaching Yuuri while also competing against him may just be the best time of his life. But he's beginning to feel that it may also be a just little bit more than he can handle in the long run.Meanwhile, Yuuri has a hard time believing that this man is even real.





	Fairy Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightrider101](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightrider101/gifts).



> This story is a belated birthday present for my very dear friend nightrider101, and **it's extremely (self-)indulgent, with no consideration for the realities of the sport** , or any sort of reality whatsoever, for that matter.  
> Seriously. If you know anything about figure skating at all, don't read this, because it will probably just piss you off.  
> I am putting this warning here, because the anime makes great efforts to depict figure skating realistically, and I love that, and yet I am trampling all over it in this fic.  
> It's basically a celebration of Victor being awesome, and it does not let things like physics, gravity, or the figure skating scoring system get in the way of that.

The thing about leaving something was that the empty space that remained in your place got filled all too quickly. When Victor left for Japan and abandoned his career in the middle of the night on a snowy bridge, Yakov told him that he could never come back. After several months and countless requests by plenty of people, including Yakov, to come back, Victor realized that his coach had been right that night when he did just that. He realized it every day, in the way his training sessions were calmer now because not as many people were interested in following his every move. In the way the reporters at press conferences asked him about his opinion of young Yuri Plisetski rather than his own plans for the future. He learned it on his third day back on Yakov's team, when he came to the ice hall at three in the morning to get some time alone on the rink and the security man at the entrance told him that Yurio had already arrived for the same reason and had asked to not to be disturbed, so Victor had to leave.

That one stung a little. Three o'clock in the morning used to be Victor's time, and the rink had been his, and he needed this time, where he could just _skate_ , without anyone watching. He _needed_ it, sometimes. He needed it now, in the middle of the night, when he could not sleep and Yuuri was in Japan preparing for the nationals, and Victor was struggling with his programs that he had ten days to choreograph and learn, and with the knowledge that no matter what he came up with, it would not be up to his usual standards, and people would be disappointed.

He needed the rink now, and he got in there in the end. It wasn't hard – he could charm his way into anything – but the rink wasn't deserted and he wouldn't use it like he needed to. Instead, he watched Yurio work on his program in the empty hall, the sound of his blades hitting the ice unnaturally loud with no one there to absorb the echo.

What Yurio was doing wasn't allowed. It was reckless and irresponsible to skate all alone, without any supervision, but Victor was not here to scold him, because he was in no position to scold. And no doubt the guard had checked in every half hour or so to see if the skater he ought not to have let in had hit his head and was bleeding out on the ice. They always had when Victor did this. It would not happen now, because Yurio was no longer alone, even if he did not know it.

Victor had always been able to use his charm – part natural, part careful honing – to be allowed in here. He wondered if Yurio had used bribery, or threats, or a lot of yelling to get past the guard, because the younger skater could not charm his way out of a wet paper bag. Maybe he had pointed out that anyone in his way was sabotaging the career of the next great skating star of Russia, because that was what he was.

When Victor was to make his comeback with a hasty and mediocre program at the nationals, the fans would be disappointed, but they would not be as disappointed as they would have been a year ago, and not for long, because Yurio would be there to draw their admiration with his performance. Watching him now, Victor turned that prediction over and over in his head, and finally decided that what he was feeling when he thought about it was, for the most part, relief.

The pressure had lessened. The skating world was slowly letting go of him. When the time came to let go of it in return, he could.

Watching Yurio now was also dissatisfying, as Victor felt the coach and choreographer inside him take over. He was not _Yurio's_ coach, and had not choreographed whatever it was he was practicing right now, but he could not idly stand by and say nothing when the boy could _do better_.

Yurio, predictably, got angry when Victor made his presence known and promptly criticised his foot work. “You should worry about your own performance, old man,” he spat. “I'm going to beat you like the has-been you are. _Georgi_ is going to beat you, you fool. That kid who did not place in a single competition last year, what's his name, is going to beat you. You should have bowed out gracefully when you could and concentrated on keeping your toy project in Japan from getting torn to pieces by me at Worlds. Do you think I am so pathetic that I need advice from my biggest rival?”

“Wow!” Victor theatrically put his hand to his mouth, amused. “I think you need all the advice you can get, considering that even though I am so terrible that even Ivan can beat me, you still consider me your biggest rival.”

Yurio turned red with anger and embarrassment. “I was talking about rivalry of our egos, not of our skating skills, as I clearly have you beat there!”

“Oh, don't worry, I think you have me beat in the ego department, too.”

“Says the guy who walks in here in the middle of the night because he feels he can allow himself to help someone who is already better than him.”

“There is a difference between pure ego and confidence,” Victor told him. “I know what I can do. I don't need to run around throwing insults at people because they intimidate me.”

Yurio responded with a whole string of insults and stormed back to the centre of the ice. He resumed his training, working on a sequence from his free skate he apparently wanted to alter for the upcoming competition, but his performance was a mess. For all that he pretended to ignore Victor, it was obvious that his emotions were once again getting the better of him.

“If you are trying to impress me with your expressive skills, you're not doing a very good job right now,” Victor called, friendly, once Yurio stopped for a moment.

Yurio still had breath to yell at him. Victor probably would not, in his place, but then, he would not have to repeat the same sequence so many times to get it right. (Yuuri's stamina was still unmatched and they would use that to their advantage in his programs. Victor pushed the thought aside because it made him feel the distance, and because he had another skater to take care of here.)

“Did you just come to annoy me? How did you even know I was here?”

“I didn't. I came to train, but annoying you is so much better.”

Yurio scowled as he skated closer, ready for a break. “You must really be full of yourself if you sacrifice training time trying to get me to be even _better_. Are you an idiot?”

“I am someone who has nothing left to prove. You, on the other hand, are so desperate for validation that you stumble over your own legs. You need to calm down and find your centre. What use is all your potential if your can't unlock it?”

“Only a moron would try to help the competition.”

“Not as much of a moron as the competition who rejects valid advice due to childish pride.”

Yurio's mouth snapped shut and Victor knew he almost had him now. The one thing Yurio hated most was being seen as a child who still had to grow into his skates.

“I beat your world record, geezer,” he pointed out, his voice low. “I beat _you_.”

“Yes, you did beat that old record, Yuri _o_ ,” Victor mused, empathizing the end of the nickname. “With a program _I_ made for you.”

Yurio turned an even darker shade of red. “Is that what this is about? When I crush you at the nationals, you want to be able to say you had a hand in it?”

“Just imagine it,” Victor demanded. “I have not trained for competition in months. I have just a few days to come up with a program, and get back into shape, and I have to take care of Yuuri's training via Skype in between, and the world _knows_ it. And here you are, having already beaten my record once. Realistically, everyone expects you to win next week. Yes, there are some fans that still think that the moment I step on the ice, I will do miracles and turn the competition into dust” – Yuuri was one of those, and he was the one Victor wanted to disappoint least – “but for everyone else, _you_ are the one to look out for.”

“I'm glad you see that,” Yurio growled.

“Imagine, then, what everyone will say when, despite my disadvantages, I still beat you.”

“Like you could!”

“Oh, I could! I don't need to be perfect, I just need to be better than you. And I know how. I know your weaknesses, which are easy to exploit if you refuse to work on them. And even if you beat me with the technical score, I can still give them a performance that will make everyone _wish_ I had won instead of you.” He shook his head, feeling a hint of honest frustration. “You'll never get to be the next big star of the skating world if you keep acting like you already are.”

Yurio huffed. “And what do you think _is_ my biggest weakness?” he asked in a dismissive tone meant to convey that he did not really care. “My Axel? My quad Flip? It's better than yours by now, you loser.”

“Your presentation,” Victor told him matter-of-factly. “It sucks.”

Yurio's eyes narrowed. “Does it now? You can't find anything proper to criticise so you jump at 'presentation'?”

“It's something you get points for, so you should work on it,” Victor pointed out. “And more than that, it's what draws the audience in. At this point, with the skills and expression you have, you are a good skater, but ultimately a forgettable one.”

Yurio's eye started twitching in anger. Victor continued before he could interrupt. “All your programs have a message at their heart, but _your_ heart is not in it, and everyone can tell. You did your best performances of your short program when you were able to _feel_ agape, did you not? You have your moments, but for the most part, your programs only tell the people around you that you really, really want to win. Just like everyone else out there. It's nothing special.”

“I'm still better than them,” Yurio growled. “And that _is_ what I am feeling when I skate.”

“Yeah, you want to impress everyone. You only think about the impression you leave through your technical skills. I can always see your ambition when I watch your skate, but also your fear.”

“I'm not afraid! You're projecting.”

“You're afraid of failing and losing their admiration. It's there in every step and jump. It makes you look like a robot. You forget that figure skating is an _expressive_ sport more than anything else. Skate for yourself, not for what you want the audience to think of you.”

Yurio snorted. “Like Georgi?”

“Georgi goes over the top, but he's a better skater than you seem to give him credit for. Not the most inventive, but he's technically sound and way more expressive than you – or I – will ever be. That's another of your problems. You won once, and now you're dismissing your competitors. At the same time you are terrified that you won't live up to the expectations you created for yourself. It's all you can think about when your skate, right? Even now, when you thought your were alone. You need to let it go and forget all about it when the music starts, or it will always hold you back.”

Yurio, surprisingly, did not reply at once. He took a sip from his water bottle and re-tied is hair. “You can talk,” he finally said, already turned back to the ice in a way that showed the discussion was over and he would not hear any more of it. “As if anything you ever showed your audiences was anything other than a calculated display of what you _wanted_ them to see.”

“True,” Victor admitted with a shrug. “But I can pull it off because I have the experience for it, and because there is enough truth in it to carry the performance. They don't have to see everything – just enough.”

“Tell that to Georgi.”

“I did, once. Do you want to hear how that went down?”

“I can imagine.”

“Besides, your step sequences still need work,” Victor changed the topic, now talking to Yurio's back. “Even out of shape and with as little training as I had, I can steal points from you on that one.”

Yurio did not reply this time. He turned back to his program, his face clouded and angry. Victor watched him out of the corner of his eye as he put on his skates and did some warm-up exercises. The teenager was still too stiff and too determined to improve on his earlier attempts, but every now and again he stopped, as if thinking about what he was doing.

Victor was in no hurry. He did not really feel like training with anyone watching right now, but there was no point in wasting all this time. He would have to plan for at least an hour to talk to Yuuri before noon, to talk about his training program before it got too late in Japan. Already he was wondering, as he took the first steps on the ice, if he could get in a short trip to Japan just before the competition, as it would probably serve to calm Yuuri's nerves, and because he really wanted to see him.

He had just finished his first set of step exercises, pretending not to notice Yurio pretending not to watch him, when the other skater came over.

“Well,” he said, not looking at Victor. “I guess, if your really feel so fucking strongly about my step sequences, you can show me.”

Victor smiled.

 

-

 

Victor did go to Japan for a day in the end, and Yakov nearly had a stroke. He lost a day of training after having barely had any to begin with. He was sabotaging his chances at the nationals, but Yuuri needed him more, and he went without regret, because it was more important than being the best at skating and impressing the audience, and there was something liberating in that.

In the end, he finished third at the nationals, half a point behind Georgi and three points behind Yurio. He did so with two programs he had mostly assembled from elements he'd discarded when creating Yuuri's programs last summer, with ten days of training under his belt, and with – between supporting Yuuri, working out the kinks in his own program, and training – four hours of sleep per night.

Georgi had placed second at the nationals many times before, but his smile was bright that day because for the first time he had been better than Victor.

Yurio stood at the top of the podium with a scowl that he didn't bother hiding, angry with himself and the small advantage in points that gave him gold in the end, because he _knew_.

 

-

 

Yuuri left Japan right after the nationals. He moved in with Victor in St. Petersburg, trained with him and was trained by him, and by the time the Four Continents rolled around, they had settled into a comfortable routine that made him feel like this had been his life for years.

Not everyone was happy to have him train at the same rink as the Russian team. Some of the coaches feared he would be given too much of an advantage by seeing their training methods all the time. Some simply did not like the idea of their greatest skater giving his support to someone who would not be winning any medals for Russia. And, of course, many resented him for 'ruining Victor's career', as they put it – for how could Victor be any good in competition if he had to split his time between his own training and the coaching of his partner?

Sometimes, it made Yuuri uncomfortable, if anyone's hostility became too obvious. But he always comforted himself with the knowledge that while they worried about where Victor's priorities lay, Victor's priorities lay with _him_ , and no dark glare or hissed comment would change that.

The thought did not only comfort him, it made him feel powerful in a way that was still new to him; in a way that even success didn't rival. Yuuri was never as confident around these people as he was among those who wanted him gone.

Their opinions would not take Victor away from Yuuri, and he was happy to watch them choke on that.

Most of the people he met every day during training were pleasant enough. In the beginning, he kept to himself for the most part, limiting his interactions to Victor alone and trying to blank out everyone else, but then Yurio aggressively pushed into his space, and through him Yuuri soon found himself pulled into the circle of the Russian skaters at least a little, and they accepted him easily enough.

It was interesting that this happened through Yurio and not through Victor. For all that Victor was friendly with and supportive of everyone around, he did not appear to share any deeper bonds with them, and soon a point was reached where Yuuri interacted with them more than Victor, the one actually on their team, did.

It was interesting, but not at all surprising. Victor often seemed aloof, detached, even, and these days he had little time to fool around. It was the one thing that made Yuuri uncomfortable about their setup: that Victor was spending time on him he could have spend on his own progress, or on resting and relaxing. If he ever failed at a performance, that would be Yuuri's fault, and he could not bear the thought.

Some voices claimed that it had already begun, with Victor's third place at the Russian nationals, while Yuuri placed first in the Japanese. This was not the glorious return to the ice they had expected; if Victor could not blow everyone away with his first competition, what was the point of him coming back at all? He should have retired while he was ahead.

Every time Yuuri heard that, though, he just got that overwhelming desire to single out whoever had said it and give them a strongly worded speech. Did they not know that Victor had defeated all but two of their skaters with less than two weeks of training? Did they believe that skaters got their skill from fairy dust and Victor was simply running out? What Victor had accomplished at the nationals was remarkable, it deserved respect, and it should be a warning to everyone else in the sport that even under conditions such as this, he had very nearly won against two skaters whose programs should by all right have been the stronger ones.

Yuuri may have given that speech once or twice.

Once was to Minako-sensei, who used to be a performer herself and really should have known better. She had been sitting next to Yuuri in the lobby of his hotel where he had watched Victor's free skate, and had commented on how weak his comeback was, what with only having two quads as compared to his usual four, and fewer combinations. If he wanted to take his crown back from Yuuri and Yurio, she'd said, he needed to do better than that.

She had meant to compliment Yuuri this way, by saying he was now better than his idol, but all it got her was a Rant.

She got it after Victor's program was over, because while he was still on the ice, Yuuri could not tear his eyes away. Yes, the elements were less demanding than usual, but they were flawlessly executed and more than that, it was beautiful. Watching this man who had so inexplicably become the centre of Yuuri's life move gracefully across the ice, moving in line with the music and flying through the air as if gravity was something he tolerated rather than bowed to, it felt like falling in love all over again. Victor skated the way other people sang, and in that moment, all Yuuri felt was a rush of happiness that he got to see that once again.

This was the first time Yuuri had watched Victor compete since they had gotten together. The time before, Victor had been an unattainable ideal and a reminder of Yuuri's own shortcomings. This time, with the lowered difficulty and stock music, he was a super nova.

And an inspiration, even more so than usual. Yuuri's free skate was less than half a day after Victor's, and he had been nervously in lead after the short program, feeling the absence of his coach and lover almost as badly as he had in Moscow a few months ago. But seeing him skate again, even if it was only on a screen, reminded Yuuri of what he could do and who he was doing it for. He did not quite get into the head space he'd had during his Grand Prix free skate, and did not score nearly as high, but at no point did he feel like he was alone on the ice.

He left Japan with more eagerness to be reunited with Victor than wistfulness about leaving his family and his home town behind yet again. Their reunion at the airport was like a repeat of the Grand Prix qualification as well, but with more smiling and more people who recognized them and had phones at hand for filming. Yuuri did not even notice that until Phitchit started sending teasing comments.

 

-

 

Training at Victor's side rather than being coached by him was not strictly a new experience for Yuuri, as they had worked on their exhibition program together. It still send his heart racing, even as it became routine with time, because it was all he had ever dreamt of growing up. In a way it made him even more excited than actually living with Victor and waking up next to him almost every morning did, because that was so surreal and out there, his mind had never bothered imagining it before it actually happened.

(Some part of Yuuri was still waiting for his brain to catch up with the fact that he just woke up next to Victor Nikiforov one morning, and then he would probably have a stroke.)

Getting coached by him was familiar by now, but the environment had changed, there were more people around than ever before, and Victor had less time for Yuuri. He tried to give his progress as much attention as before, but Yuuri quickly put a stop to that with strong words, as from the very beginning of this new arrangement, it was obvious that this was simply impossible. Victor had to take care of his own training as well, with Yakov making sure that he did, and he had to rest every now and then. The day only had so many hours.

Yuuri tried to do his own thing while Victor was engaged elsewhere, watching him and the others as Victor had told him to do. Sometimes Yurio approached Yuuri to dismissively point out things he could do better, much to the chagrin of Yakov and the other coaches. Mostly, Victor placed Yuuri's training sessions into the time when he was done already or hadn't yet started, which caused weird hours for both of them.

Despite the weirdness, and the vague guilt for the stress all this put on Victor, and the fact that he now had to share him with other people all the time rather than just during competitions, Yuuri still would not have traded him for any other coach. He had liked Celestino and been as close to him as he would let anyone be at the time, but his former coach had never been able to unlock Yuuri's potential the way Victor did, and this was not because he was a bad coach or because he had other athletes to take care of at the same time. Celestino was not to blame for that, and neither was Yuuri. Every athlete was different and needed a different approach, just like all coaches had different approaches to offer. Yuuri and Celestino had simply not worked.

Victor just so happened to be perfect for him. At the same time, Yuuri was aware that he probably would not make a very good coach for anyone else.

Victor had been completely inexperienced when he stated coaching him, and now he was much better at dealing with all sorts of situations, but it was through Yuuri he had learned how, and his way of dealing and helping was individually tailored to Yuuri. They had learned each other and grown into Victor's coaching role together.

That was okay. Yuuri was perfectly fine with being the only one.

That didn't mean things were entirely easy now. There were times when everything and everyone threatened to be just too much for Yuuri to put up with, especially when the season was officially over and he had to start dealing with new programs rather than falling back on the ones he was familiar and comfortable with. Music had to be chosen. Long discussions were had between Yuuri and Victor about what he wanted and could incorporate into his performance. Too many people were watching as he tried out things that did not work. The city was still new to him and he had no place to withdraw to but their apartment where he felt Victor's absence too strongly even when he _wanted_ to be alone. On those days, Yuuri missed Hasetsu. He missed the beach, Minako-sensei and her studio, and the Ice Castle where he could train on his own whenever he needed to. There was no such space for him here.

And little chance to find one in the off season. He had imagined that this would be the time when Victor would show him around and Yuuri would start to feel at home in this city, but Victor mostly spend his time at the rink when he had the chance, working ahead because he would be short on time later. Yuuri went with him sometimes, but most of the time he stayed at home with Makkachin or let himself be dragged out by Yurio, feeling that after a long, hard season (his best one yet) he deserved a break. Then he felt guilty because Victor did not get one. Then he was busy ignoring Yurio clumsily trying to tease him about his off-season-weight-gain™, which came across as insulting and rude even though Yuuri suspected it was not entirely meant to be.

“Victor shouldn't leave you alone all the time,” Yurio growled one time, while they were sitting in a café near the grocery store where Yuuri and Victor got most of their food – sometimes even at the same time. “It's pretty rude to invite you to another continent and then never be there to entertain you.”

It was his way of saying 'I wish Victor would take a break.'

“He's still coming home at night,” Yuuri tried to appease, then grew flustered when he realized how that sounded, then calmed down when he realized he didn't really care. “And in the meantime, I have you to show me around.”

The last bit was teasing, because Yurio never wanted to be caught being kind. “Well,” he said, not looking at Yuuri out of embarrassment and eager to move away from the subject. “I guess if he wants to compete against us without looking like a total failure, he needs all the exercise be can get.”

“Did you see the new short program he's working on?” Yuuri asked, suddenly very lively. “He showed me what he got last week. It's amazing, and it's not even finished!”

“I've caught glimpses,” Yurio said dismissively. “It's okay, I guess. I can beat it. We'll see about _you_.”

“I'm sure Victor will come up with something for me that will give him a hard time,” Yuuri predicted, half-teasing and half-excited. “I do wish he would take a break, though.”

Yurio rolled his eyes. “I wish you would talk about anything else.”

 

-

 

“So that's great,” Victor said, annoyingly positive. “There's only one Grand Prix event where we will not be competing together.”

“How is that great?” Yuuri asked, low-key fighting panic since the announcement. “We could kick each other out of the competition.”

“Yes, but that's not going to happen,” Victor said, annoyingly confident. “We don't have to be better than each other. We just have to be better than everyone else.”

“The others are not beginners. Yurio's competing. JJ, Chris, to name a few. They could all score better than us,” Yuuri pointed out, meaning 'They could all score better than _me_.'

“You're right, we can't underestimate them,” Victor said and put his arm around Yuuri's shoulders, annoyingly upbeat. “But not all competitors are that strong.”

“Some are, and there are only six spots for the finale.”

“Yeah, but you don't need to actually win every competition leading up there, you just need to place high enough. Remember, last time you didn't win _anything_. You still made it, even though at the Rostelecom Cup you only placed fourth,” Victor said, annoyingly.

 

-

 

Yuuri loved skating. He also enjoyed not having to skate once in a while. He enjoyed other things that he could enjoy best if he did not have to worry about being in bed in time to get enough sleep, or about being at the rink in time. Like video games. He loved video games, and he had missed so many new titles, and never gotten around to finishing older ones he had already started. The last time he had played for any extended amount of time was between his total failure at the nationals and Victor coming into his life. He had had the time then, and had needed the distraction, and had cared little enough for basically anything to worry about missed time if he played until late at night.

Last summer he had been too high on Victor being a thing (a real, touchable, and really silly and infuriating thing) and with getting back in shape and studying his programs to waste time like that or even think about it. But now he finally had idle time on his hands again, and a controller in his hands, and zombies on his screen. All he needed now, to make him perfectly happy, was for that undercurrent of guilt to kindly leave him alone.

Here Yuuri was, having a good time, and no one to keep him company, because Victor was at the rink again, because taking care of Yuuri left him no time to idle away of him own.

He didn't seem to mind, though, and so Yuuri tried not to, either, as the enemies fell to his swords, and then he watched with Makkachin's head in his lap while the plot progressed and a new chapter opened for him to explore.

He decided to finish this mission and then go to bed, to not get up too late tomorrow morning. Three missions and as many hours later, he was pulled out of his game trance by Victor flopping down onto the sofa next to him.

Yuuri paused the game while the other man liquified with a long groan and ended up bonelessly sprawled over him, his head in Yuuri's lap where Makkachin had been until very recently. “How's it going?” he asked, eyeing the screen. “If I read that bar correctly, you're about two hits away from dying.”

“One hit,” Yuuri informed him. “But that's fine. I'm invincible. If I mess this up, I'll just start from the last checkpoint until I get it right.”

“That would be nice,” Victor slurred.

Yuuri let go of the controller to stroke his hair. “How's it going for you? Any progress?”

“I guess so. Quad loop was going pretty well today.”

“You're really going to use that in your program next season?” Yuuri wasn't sure how he felt about that. Excited, because Victor was still able to find new things to add and get even better, but also slightly desperate.

“Of course,” Victor confirmed, as if that was a no-brainer. “I need it if I want to beat you.”

And now Yuuri was feeling pretty proud, because Victor was taking him seriously as a competitor who skated on his level, and it was all he had ever dreamt of. “I was actually surprised you never used it in competition before,” he admitted. “You did show it in your exhibitions, so I knew you could do it.”

“You can do a quad flip, but you still need a good day to actually land it,” Victor pointed out, sounding too sleepy for that to do anything to Yuuri's pride. “I didn't take that risk before, because I didn't need to.”

He turned his head to press a soft kiss to Yuuri's hand, close to the ring that adorned his finger, and Yuuri bent down to press a kiss to his forehead. “Shall we go to bed?” he suggested. “You have to be tired.”

“I am. But wired, too. I don't think I can sleep.” As if to belie his own words, his eyes drifted half-closed. “Can you play a little longer? I like watching.”

Yuuri picked up his controller again, found a way to hold it that did not block Victor's view of the screen, and quietly bid goodbye to the idea of going to sleep before dawn. “Alright.”

 

-

 

It took some time for Yuuri to really understand what Victor had told him that night, about falling back on jumps and techniques that were a risk to show. It should not have. For many years he had marvelled over how secure Victor seemed in everything he did on the ice, how rarely he made any mistake at all. But it was never clearer to him than now, when he showed his weaknesses.

Because Victor Nikiforov's weaknesses were not like those of any other skater, oh no. Often in the past had Yuuri thought, in his more ridiculous and star-stuck moments, how little like a normal human being Victor was; how he seemed to float above everything. How, if there was a god of skating, it would be this man. These days, there was nothing ridiculous about those thoughts, and it was all because Yuuri got to see Victor when he allowed them to see a side of him that wasn't perfect.

As it turned out, perfection had a different meaning as applied to Victor than it did to everyone else.

And so did taking risks.

Yuuri took risks at his every performance. Every time he did a quad Flip there was a good chance he would mess it up. It was his trump card because it helped him get points he would not get if he did not take that risk, but chances were that he would fail and it would backfire and cost him points instead. His quad Salchow was a similar story. Even his triple Axel, his favourite jump since he had landed it for the first time many years ago, carried a chance of failure, even if that chance was not as big.

So if he had to play it safe, Yuuri would do without any of the elements that came with a high chance of costing him points. He hated doing that, always wanted to show his best, but sometimes, when not falling below a certain mark was more important than breaking another mark, he fell back onto his base level: the level of skating where he would only show elements that he was secure it, that he could skate with his eyes closed and half asleep and that, baring disaster, would not cost him anything.

All of Victor's programs in the past five years had been ridiculously difficult. And he had been ridiculously successful with them, rarely ever being anything short of perfect. Looking back, it seemed silly to assume that he had just never caught a bad day.

When Yuuri had gone all out, taken all the risks, and they all paid off, he had been able to beat Victor's old world record, barely. It had been the same for Yurio. And yet, had they actually competed against the Victor of the previous Grand Prix finale, the one that was tired and demotivated and just going through the motions, he would have beaten them with room to spare, because both of them had made mistakes in one of their programs, and Victor's had been just about as difficult and both the short and the free program had been executed flawlessly. It was the level at which Victor skated perfectly, the kind of thing he could do in his sleep. The reason why his programs hadn't been even more difficult back then was that they didn't need to be.

Why take risks if he could beat all the competition playing it safe?

It was sobering and exciting at the same time to realize that at his very best, Yuuri was just slightly better than Victor at his base level.

He wondered if Yurio had reached that conclusion yet.

The idea of Victor leaving the comfortable shell he had settled into and finally pushing his limits again was as exhilarating for Yuuri as it was for Victor himself. As a competitor, it was terrifying as well. At first glance, it looked like no one could possibly compete with him on his level, as if all Yuuri and Yurio had accomplished by breaking his records was to finally push him all the way out of the reach of mortals. But Victor soon managed to make Yuuri see how this development might actually make their competitions a lot more open than they had been, by reminding him why Victor had not done certain things before: If he did them and all went well, he was undefeatable. But if it went wrong and he made a mistake, he would lose points and people could finally beat him. He seemed excited about the prospect – Yuuri, who had spend most of his career chasing his shadow wondered how it felt to finally be challenged again.

Just doing what was safe was no longer enough, even if it was mindblowingly amazing, because if Yuuri or Yurio had two perfect programs, they could do better than that. Of course that was not all that likely, because for that kind of program, they had to give their best and take the kind of risk Victor was taking when he was reaching for the stars. But they could, and Victor acknowledged that by taking risks of his own. And this could not only benefit Yuuri but all the other skaters competing against them. The more they pushed themselves, the higher the chance of messing up and letting someone else win for a chance.

Victor didn't seem bothered by that thought at all. Yuuri thought that if he had to lose to anyone, he wanted it to be Victor.

 

-

 

As Victor had predicted, the results table of the figure skating competitions got a little more exciting now that he was forced to show programs more vulnerable to mistakes. Before they had that conversation, he'd already finished only second at the European Championship, after failing to land a quad-tripple-trippe combination in the short program, and Yurio won after a decent short and a near perfect free skate. Yuuri later observed that Victor would have won this competition with an easier, less demanding combination, but Victor seemed to enjoy the new challenge too much to play it safe now just because he could.

Yuuri had won Four Continents in the old season, with his old programs, in front of Seung-Gil from Korea and Phitchit, who placed third and took an unbelievable number of selfies. At Worlds, Victor had won despite a near-fall with his quad Flip that he no longer had the strength to execute flawlessly late in the program. He scored a hair's breath ahead of Yuuri, who'd managed to keep Yurio in check with two solid performances, whereas the young Russian had the stronger short program but ran out of strength near the end of his free skate. Yuuri, while thinking that winning against Victor would have been nice, considering he'd made a mistake and Yuuri hadn't, he was still pretty okay with this constellation. Yurio was not.

After the break, with new programs and new expectations, Yuuri placed second during his first Grand Prix competition, while Victor won his. On their shared one, in Tokyo, Yuuri beat Victor by inches and Victor took him out for Katsudon afterwards. For the finale, they both messed up – Victor with a botched quad Loop during his short program that got him the bronze medal in the end, and Yuuri with two falls and an unclean landing during his free skate that had him fall down to fourth place after a promising start. Chris won for the first time ever, before Otabek Altin from Kazakhstan. Yurio had just barely not qualified after two bad days in a row and had refused to talk to either of them for the rest of the qualification. (Yuuri saw him in the audience at the finale, though, cheering for all of them in his grumpy way, and decided to thank him for that by never bringing it up.)

The next nationals came and went. Yuuri had a bad fall in his short program, busting his elbow, and while he managed to keep it together through the free skate, he still lost to Minami, who had gotten consistently better during the last year. He still depended on Yuuri's mistakes to beat him, but it was no longer as humiliating, and Victor (victorious in his own nationals once again) coming to Japan the next day, and a big bowl of his mother's Katsudon, did a lot to sooth Yuuri's ego.

Meanwhile, the interviews both Yuuri and Victor had to give throughout the season did a lot to make him angry. In the competitions they both participated in, Victor beat Yuuri more often than Yuuri beat Victor, and it was something that the reporters were unable to let go in the face of the fact that Victor was his coach and also the one who choreographed Yuuri's programs. Could it be, they asked, that Victor gave him programs too weak to beat him at his best in order to gain a personal advantage?

The first time Yuuri heard that question, although he should have seen it coming, he was so speechless his jaw literally dropped. He soon found his speech again, however, and gave one that tried to encompass his feelings in the most polite way without hiding how offensive he found the mere suggestion. First of all, how dare they call Yuuri's programs weak? He was the best he had ever been, he was one of the best skaters in the world, with a world record under his belt (that we was certain to lose soon, but that was neither here nor there), and saying his programs were weaker than they ought to be was insulting not only to Yuuri but also to all other skaters. But mostly to Yuuri. He took it very personally, considering that they were so hard he had not been certain he could master them at all when Victor and him had created them at the beginning of the season, even with his new skills and confidence. In fact, it was Victor who had pushed him into trying. (It was Yuuri who chose to ignore his advice every time he told him to take it slow because he could, afterwards, because he hated doing that even if he knew it would be the smart thing to do.)

And secondly, how dare they accuse Victor of any kind of menace? How stupid and blind were they to suggest he needed to manipulate the competition in order to win? Did they now see how _good_ he was?

Yuuri tried to be calm and polite with the reporters, but he felt strongly about this and, watching the interview later on youtube, had to admit that it had kind of leaked through.

After the first time, the question came up on a few more occasions, but then it was asked less directly, and generally preceded by a variation of “You have made it very clear in the past how you personally feel about this, but”.

One time a functionary of the JSF suggested that Yuuri might want to look for another coach to avoid conflict of interest, and he would have thought about it just to see their reaction when his skill level dropped back to what it used to be, if spite had been a stronger motivator for him than success and personal happiness, which it absolutely wasn't.

Victor was infuriatingly calm about it, amused even. Yuuri wanted to strangle him a few times. He also wanted to strangle every reporter who felt the need to point out that Victor's rate of success had gone down significantly since the year he took off to become a coach.

Victor was still the most successful skater currently active. Compared to everyone else, he was astonishing. The problem was that they always compared him to the Victor Nikiforov of the past, who had had no competition of his own level and won everything.

As far as Yuuri was concerned, Victor was even more astonishing now than he had been ever before. The challenge Yuuri and Yurio were finally able to provide pushed him out of his well-established limitations and although he no longer won everything, he shone on the ice in a way Yuuri had not even noticed he hadn't before.

And he was happier than before – something that filled Yuur with more pride than all the medals he was now able to win. The opinions of the reporters and criticisms of the fans did not bother Victor. He remained calm even when, as the Olympic games drew closer, he was asked if it was not time for him to step down and leave his place on the Russian team to another, more promising talent.

“Who is on the team is not my decision to make but that of the Russian Skating Federation,” he replied with a pleasant smile. “And you need not worry about their bias. The RSF does not care about my ego or even my legacy. They care about medals, and at this point I am still winning more of those than any other skater on the team. So you can rest assured; I am certain that the moment one of the young talents who have never so far won anything outside of local competitions is able to give them more medals than I do, they will replace me in a heartbeat. At this time, however, it would be a very unfortunate thing to do and harm the reputation of our sport in Russia far more than it would help.”

He did not make any friends within the RSF that day, or with the younger skaters, for that matter.

 

-

 

There just was no break, it seemed, at all, between the championships and the Olympics. Yuuri spend every moment of his day that he was not asleep or eating preparing for the games. It was a big thing. It was _his_ big thing. He had never competed in the games before, had not managed to make the cut last time, and hadn't been anywhere near ready the time before. This time he would go, and he would be _good_ , and if he wasn't, he would, he would–

“Let's go to the beach,” Victor suggested while Yuuri was brooding over his breakfast, lost in thought and the anticipation of failure. He looked up, annoyed by the nonsensical suggestion and the interruption of his foul mood.

“It's freezing,” he pointed out.

“Not here. Let's go to Australia. Or New Zealand. They have summer now. New Zealand is probably better, it's not as hot.”

“Are you insane?” Yuuri asked, when it looked like Victor was actually serious.

“No, I am bored. I am bored, and you are stressed out, and a weekend in New Zealand is going to do us very good.”

“One,” Yuuri began, “New Zealand is not a place you visit for a weekend. And two: It's Tuesday.”

“It's a figurative weekend. Fortunately, neither of us has a job that cares about weekdays. And we can't go for longer because we'll lose too much practice time, and Yakov would probably kill me.”

“We shouldn't go at all.”

“Probably not. And I should never have put my career on hold to got to Japan for you, and yet here we are.”

It was hard to argue with that.

“We still shouldn't go,” Yuuri insisted anyway. “Because it would be an idiotic thing to do.”

 

-

 

For someone who had amassed a lot of money through his career, Victor's life wasn't particularly extravagant. To Yuuri, who struggled to make do with his sponsorships and the support of his parents, he had always come across as rich, and without doubt he was, but a lot of his wealth came from careful managing of his income and expenses. For all that he liked high quality clothing and comfortable accommodations, he always had an eye on the price tag (perhaps more so than Yuuri) and most of his more glamorously expensive things had been gifts from sponsors or fans.

His apartment, while large and in a moderately expensive location, was nowhere near the kind of palace that Yuuri had come to associate with rich people through TV and magazines. And Victor had never once complained about the comparative lack of comfort at the Inn of Yuuri's parents but seemed perfectly happy sleeping in his room that had never been intended to be a bedroom, or watching TV with everyone else in the dining room.

That did not mean that he wasn't willing or ready to get out his wallet and spend a lot of money on a whim if he had to. Like now, when he booked them a business class flight to New Zealand and a hotel on the shortest of notices and dragged Yuuri away for a very expensive two days in the sun.

Yuuri did not want to admit that he needed just that. He was beginning to panic about his training and his performance, about finally making it to the Olympics only to have a repeat of the Sotchi Grand Prix in front of the world and his family and friends and fans and all the people who he now knew had always supported him and who now had so many expectations–

It became hard to think of anything else after a while, and the urge to go to the rink and train until he fell over was strong. In fact, he felt like training until he felt over was the only way he may get any sleep at all, and even then he would probably wake up cold and vaguely damp and still feel guilty that he wasn't working hard enough.

“Tell me, Yuuri,” Victor said, as they were in the taxi to the airport. He was drawing out the name, as he always did when he was playful, or irritated, or just wanted Yuuri to listen to him. “What would you do different in your training from what you've tried already?”

“Nothing,” Yuuri admitted, and didn't even wonder how Victor knew what he was worrying about. “I've tried everything.”

“And it's going well.”

“But I need to keep it up and get even better.”

“Yuuri.” Victor took hold of Yuuri's shoulders and leaned into him. “You're _good_. And doing the same thing over and over again is not going to make you better. If you stayed in the rink and did the same progression of jumps and steps and spins until you can't see anymore for exhaustion, do you think that will lead to something that's any better than what you already accomplished?”

Yuuri had grown into his programs this season. He had executed both of them flawlessly at various points, and was already comfortable with the changes they'd made for the games. But they weren't stable. He was still dependent on having a good day. However...

“I'd just get worse,” he muttered.

“Yes, you would,” Victor confirmed, satisfied, as if that were something to be proud of. “Your skills will not fly away if you don't train for three days. And you won't gain too much weight, either, because I don't think that offer Katsudon where we are going.”

With that he leaned back again, and Yuuri felt that the conversation was officially over, now that he had accepted that they were really going and stopped feeling so bad about it. He refrained from picking up on the silent offer of a changed topic and stared out of the window instead, in silent contemplation this time, rather than silent panic.

Half a day later he was lying on a beach in New Zealand, letting the sun shine onto the parts of him that weren't in the shade of the umbrella. He wasn't thinking about anything. He was listening to the waves, and feeling the sun and the gentle breeze, and he wasn't thinking anything at all, and it was _wonderful_.

He nearly drifted off. Perhaps he did, for a moment. Eventually his feet, out in the sun, got too warm, and he was thinking about going for a swim. His limps were heavy when he moved them, feeling the weight of the past months, but even that seemed to be far away for one glorious moment.

Trying to find out how Victor felt about the prospect of water, he looked around and found him lying on his stomach on the towel, his face turned towards Yuuri, breathing evenly in deep sleep. His long silver lashes were fanning against his skin, and all of a sudden, Yuuri was taken aback by how utterly exhausted Victor looked. Then he felt guilty. He had been so focused on his own issues that he had missed how badly Victor needed a break, too.

No, not missed. It was not something that could be missed. For weeks he had worried about it, every time Victor left the apartment before him or returned long after him. He had, wrapped up in his recent downward spiral of emotions, simply forgotten about it.

But even the guilt was somewhat subdued and distant. Victor was getting some rest now. Yuuri was suddenly not only okay with having made this trip but very, very happy about it.

He rolled onto his side and simply watched Victor for a long time. He didn't even think about waking him. When eventually he moved to go into the water, he just adjusted the umbrella so Victor would stay in the shade as the sun moved. He was kind of clumsy doing it, and made more noise than he had intended, but Victor never stirred.

 

-

 

They got back to Russia two days later, arriving late at night and getting up early in the morning as if they had never gone away. Victor woke up first, leaving the bed as quietly as possible and leaving for the rink long before sunrise. Yuuri could sleep a few hours longer, as there would be no room on the rink for his training until after noon.

Yakov had been informed about their impromptu vacation, but he had not exactly been _asked_ , and so Victor had to wait through five minutes of lecture while his coach called him irresponsible and selfish and lazy. He smiled and nodded whenever there was a pause, but didn't really listen.

“If you cannot keep up your training without having to run away to another continent two weeks before the Olympics, you need to stop with the coaching,” Yakov said with the growl that indicated that he was approaching the end of his lecture. “This has been a bad idea from the beginning. You should never even have gone to Japan, and I told you so!”

“Actually, you told me if I left I couldn't come back,” Victor corrected him with a pleasant smile. “So wouldn't it make more sense to drop the skating and concentrate on being Yuuri's coach instead? We could move to Japan, and it would be like you had been correct from the beginning.”

“Anyone could coach that boy. Only you can skate your programs, Vitya, so stop insulting me with you petty moods. As if you would drop out of the competition so short before the games!”

“You're right, that would be a stupid thing to do,” Victor admitted, making a show of looking thoughtful. “Right after the games is much better.”

He turned and skated away with a cheerful wave before Yakov could reply, or figure out that that was exactly what he was planning to do.

He hadn't told Yuuri yet, knowing this was the kind of life-changing decision that he should share with his partner but afraid it would negatively affect the other skater in his preparation. Him competing was very important to Yuuri. And Victor loved competing against him. He loved the challenge that he had been missing for so long, he loved trying new things, even if they did not work. And he loved simply performing in this sport that he loved side by side with the man he loved and who inspired him.

This season may not have been his most successful, but it had been his best.

It was the greatest season of his life, with the competition, the coaching, the programs he had choreographed for Yuuri, to bring out the best in him, and make him shine. But it was also too much.

He was tired all the time. He barely, if ever, had any time for himself, not even in the off-season. He hadn't been able to spend time with Makkachin in months, his thoughts kept circling around skating even if he tried not to think about it for a change, and the interviews were tiring him out.

And he _ached_. All the time now. Victor was close to thirty, and he had pushed his body to its limits for more than twenty of those years. Every jump he failed to land strained old injuries he hadn't felt like this in a long time, and even those he did land flawlessly sent a shock through his joints and muscles. In the beginning the ache had almost felt good, a reminder that he was back to doing what he did best. Now, it mostly just hurt.

The trip to New Zealand, though very short, had been a blessing. Yuuri was much less stiff now, going into his training sessions with new energy and with the kind of enthusiastic determination he needed to be at his best. It was a joy to watch him again, and Victor's own motivation had also profited from the short vacation. But the three days without skating had not been enough to make the ache go away, there was a persistent pressure on his lungs that he was afraid was not merely caused by the exertion, and the moderate dread that he had been able to forget for a few days returned as if it had never gone away.

Still, he felt a lot better now than he had before. He was just looking forward to it being over.

And he wanted the dread to stop. Having made his decision, it had lifted somewhat. Talking to Yuuri about it, he knew, would bring even more relief. But for the moment, he was ready to carry the guilt of keeping his upcoming retirement form his lover a little longer. Yuuri would feel guilty, like it was his fault that Victor no longer had the strength to keep this up. He'd insist on Victor stopping to coach him rather than stopping his competitive career. And then he would come up with the idea of retiring himself, and Victor would have to strangle him.

He was selfish, he admitted. He wanted Yuuri to keep skating, and he wanted to keep coaching him. That was their partnership as he wanted it to go on forever. This year of competing against each other, inspiring each other to push their limit ever further back, had been great, but in the end it had been just a bonus.

It was okay to be selfish on this, because he knew that Yuuri didn't really want to retire. Not now, when he was finally reaching his potential, but still had so much to accomplish. He might feel like he had to, for Victor's sake, but he didn't _want_ to.

All Victor had to do was make him understand that he was going to retire, whether he kept coaching Yuuri or not. He was tired by now, and other than Yuuri, he had already accomplished everything. He didn't plan on getting Olympic gold this year, but if he did, it would be his third. He'd had his time, and it made sense for him to go.

In the end, he felt, Yuuri wouldn't be able to argue with him, because Victor was right, Yuuri had nothing to bargain with, since releasing Victor as his coach would gain him nothing, and Yuuri actually wanted to keep skating. He simply dreaded the conversation that would get him there, and that was selfish, too, and here that just wouldn't do.

There was no guarantee that this development's effect on Yuuri would be negative, after all. He might just as well draw strength from it. Victor couldn't be sure what to expect, in the end. All he knew was that Yuuri would be angry if he did not tell him, and rightfully so.

So he brought the topic up during a late diner that night, after they had finally gotten back home from the rink. “There's something I should tell you,” he said, and Yuuri looked at him over his bowl and asked, “Are you planning to retire from the sport?”

Relief flooded Victor, who had expected this to be a lot harder, and made him smile. “Yes,” he confirmed. “As a skater. I'll stay as your coach, if you'll have me.”

“Yuuri?” he asked a moment later, when Yuuri did not react to his words at all. Yuuri wasn't looking at him; he was looking at his food, but for once did not seem to see that, either.

After a too-long silence, Yuuri stood and carried his half-empty bowl to the kitchen. “I think I'll take a walk. Don't stay up for me.”

Victor felt panic rise in him. This was bad! This was the opposite of good! He had expected a discussion, even a heated one. He could have presented all of his arguments then, and come out on top, because there really was no way anyone could defeat 'I don't want to do this anymore', but Yuuri just walking out left things painfully unresolved.

And wasn't that just so fucking typical?

“Don't do this,” he called after the other man, rising from his chair. “Don't just walk out! Why are you upset?”

Yuuri turned sharply, and with shock and guilt Victor realized he was holding back tears. “Why am I upset?” he snapped. “When were you planning on telling me?”

“I am telling you now,” Victor pointed out, confused.

“And how long have you known? You just went and made that decision without me.”

“Of course, because it's not your decision to make. It has nothing to do with you, if that's what you're worrying about. I would retire after the games even if I weren't coaching you.”

“After the games!” Yuuri echoed in shock. “You're not even waiting until the season is over!”

“I wasn't going to, no.”

“So, you're going to retire in ten days,” Yuuri summed up. “And you're telling me _now_?”

“Would you rather I hadn't told you?” Victor asked, genuinely lost, because he was trying to figure out where he had gone wrong now, but also getting genuinely irritated and trying not to show it.

“Of course not! You should have told me ages ago. No.” Yuuri shook his head. “You shouldn't retire at all. I knew coaching me while competing yourself would be too much, I should never have made you.”

“Nonsense. I told you it had nothing to do with that.”

“You should have stopped coaching when you returned to skating.”

“Stop telling me what I should or shouldn't do, like everyone else has been doing!” Victor snapped. It wasn't much of a snap. He wasn't good at that. Expressing his emotions didn't come easy to him and he admired Yuuri for his ability to stand there with tears in his eyes and be openly angry.

It was enough of a snap for Yuuri to shut up. He looked at Victor with wide eyes for a moment, then he put down his bowl, turned to the bedroom, and shut the door.

 

-

 

It was cold outside. That, in and off itself, wasn't unexpected. It was winter, in Russia. Of course it was cold.

But Victor was used to it. He lived here, after all, and most of the time he wasn't outside he spend in a hall that was cooled down to freezing temperatures so the ground didn't melt. The cold didn't bother him on any other day. Most of the time he didn't really notice it much.

Now, however, he pulled the collar of his coat up higher and shivered. The cold seemed to creep up underneath his clothes, and every slight breeze of air seemed to suck the life out of him.

It sounded appropriately dramatic, but the truth was that he was simply tired.

Snow was falling softly. Victor stopped on the bridge for a while, looking down onto the river. He was calmer than he had thought he would be. He knew Yuuri and him would work through this silly fight once Yuuri had time to process the news. He could get worked up in negative thoughts, and a part of Victor wanted to go home and talk about this _now_ , make it go away so they could both sleep tonight, but he felt that right now it was better to give Yuuri some space to figure out what he felt about this and why on his own.

Yuuri wouldn't storm out while he was gone and get on the next plane to Japan. He would still be there were Victor got back, and he had faith in both of them to get over this quickly.

But, all that aside, he didn't like them fighting.

Even though he was certain they would be all right, the fight had left Victor unsettled and restless, and he knew that he would not be able to find any sleep, even if he were to actually go back home and enter the bedroom, which he did not much feel like doing right now. He found his way to the rink instead, which lay dark and silent before him.

That did not mean it was actually empty. It just meant that none of the areas visible from the outside were lit.

He hadn't brought any training clothes, and wasn't going to go back home to get them. His skates were locked in at the rink anyway, and he had the key on him always. He wasn't going to _train_ , as such. He just wanted to _skate_.

Yuuri did this more often than him: skating when he needed to think and find his mental balance. Or at least he used to, in Japan, where he could take the opportunity whenever he wanted to. Yuuri had assured Victor that it wasn't much of an issue, since he hadn't been able to do it in Detroit either, but Victor still felt a little guilty about it, and more so now, when the guard let him in to do exactly what Yuuri did not have a chance to do.

He wasn't part of the Russian team, so he couldn't just come and go as he wanted. And he'd never asked Victor to get him in here. With distant guilt, Victor realized that he had probably not wanted to make him come here again after he'd finally gotten home.

Well, if they moved back to Hasetsu after this season, then Yuuri would once again be able to use the Ice Castle as much as he wanted, after hours.

Victor tried not to worry about it too much. He slipped through the darkened halls, picked up his skates, and made it to the rink that was well lit but empty. He warmed up for a while, losing himself in the familiar process, and thought of nothing. Before he slipped on his skates, he fished his phone out of his coat pocket.

The phone case was a design in black and various shades of blue, based on his free skate costume. Like the previous one, it had been a gift from a talented and generous fan who had been overjoyed to see that he was actually using it. The display told him it was half an hour past midnight, and that he had one new message.

 _Are you at the rink?_ Yuuri had written. Victor smiled softly at the small screen.

_Yes. I'll be back in an hour or so. Don't wait up, it's late._

He send the message and put the phone away, tied up his skates and slipped onto the ice. For a moment he just glided, his eyes half closed, listening to the sound the blades on frozen water. Why did everyone think that he would never again skate once he stopped competing? How could anyone think he would give this up?

After a few minutes he started to pick up speed as he allowed himself, just here and just now, to feel all the doubt he had been struggling with all season.

Maybe doubt wasn't the right word. Maybe it was apprehension. Or maybe neither of those were the only word. Maybe it was both. Maybe there was more than that.

Victor wasn't actually that good at dealing with emotions. Most of his life he had been in the public eye, and he had learned to suppress them quite well and only show people what he wanted them to see, off the ice and on it. It didn't matter, really, what it was called. Giving it a name wouldn't change how he felt, and he wasn't going to explain himself to anyone.

He didn't think he'd know how.

Yuuri was much better at that than him. Victor picked up speed and let his love for and frustration with the other skater lift him into a triple Salchow. It came easy, as always. His jumps were not something he was worrying about, except for the quad loop, which he had never been able, nor forced, to perfect. That was okay, though. He enjoyed having to take a bit of a risk now. It was just sad that the inevitable mistakes this left him prone to ended up disappointing his fans, who were rather used to him being perfect. It couldn't be helped, and he didn't like dwelling on it, but disappointing people was the last thing he wanted to do.

Victor turned around now, picked up speed again, and did the quad loop with relative ease, followed by a triple. The combination worked flawlessly, but that didn't mean it always did. He wasn't sure if he would do it like this during the competition, or if he would refrain from having it be a combination. On the one hand, he wanted his last performance to be as difficult as he could make it, on the other hand he did not want it to be a complete disaster. It was a struggle he had with every element of his program, in a way he'd never had to face before. He wasn't entirely happy with the choreography either, all season, even though it had won him competitions and praise. Something was lacking.

Perhaps that was simply the bit that he had sacrificed for Yuuri's success. Or perhaps it had always been lacking, and before Yuuri he just didn't have it in him to care.

Victor raised his arms and started falling into the movements of his choreography. He hadn't intended to practice it, but it happened now and he let it happen, playing the music in his head and allowing his body to follow the lines it drew without thought.

Instead, he let his emotions guide him, trying to dance all negative feelings out of his body; embracing them and expelling them. For once he allowed himself to ride all the hurt, fear, doubt, and worry, just for a moment, because no one was watching. The longer he did this, the easier it was. Victor was rarely honest with his emotions, even to himself. It was difficult to acknowledge them now, and when they finally flooded through him, one after the other, he used them as fuel and as a guide. Figure skating was an expressive sport, he had told Yurio months ago, and here he was, expressing himself to no one.

The mask he had worn all his life had grown heavy with the years, but it had become a part of him as well, and was impossible to discard. Sometimes (very rarely, on nights like this) he was able to lift it a bit and shed some of the weight. He wondered if Yuuri felt this way when he was skating all the time, never holding back any of his emotions now that he had learned to draw strength from them rather than let them bring him down.

A quad flip that felt like coming home. As much as he was careful to present a certain persona to the public eye, Victor had never bothered to make any kind of secret of his love for Yuuri and his admiration of him, because wanted Yuuri to see and didn't care who else was watching. And because it was a wonderful thing that should be embraced like all wonderful things. He felt a smile tug at the corners of his mouth and let it happen, spreading over his face that was damp with both sweat and tears, and let it carry him into a flying sit spin as the music in his mind reached a point that called for it.

For a while he simply lost himself, allowing himself to feel and going through his program the way it wanted to be performed, if only in his mind. It was only a few minutes, but it felt longer. By the time he came to an end, he was covered in sweat and quite out of breath, even though he hadn't done the whole thing. He trailed off without bothering with the finishing pose, as it had never felt quite right to him anyway and the one he wanted to do in its stead, the one he felt like doing, would have been empty and pointless here and now. So Victor simply let the energy of his last sequence carry him across the ice towards the edge of the rink while he tried to catch his breath. His lungs hurt in a way they usually didn't. For the first time in what felt like forever, he actually saw his environment. Yurio was standing near the door to the rink and glared at him.

“You hypocrite,” he said.

 

-

 

“Hey Yurio,” Victor greeted him brightly, if slightly out of breath. Yuri wanted to strangle him. It was a normal reaction, but right now it was unusually strong. “What are you doing here? It's late.”

Yuri hadn't been able to sleep. He was nervous and wired and actually kind of panicking about his first Olympic Games, but that was none of Victor's business. “You told me that in order to evolve as a skater, I had to 'express my emotions' on the ice,” he growled, trying to imitate Victor's voice, finger quotes and all. “While at the same time, you can't be arsed to do the same. If you did what I just saw during the competitions, no one else would ever stand a chance.”

“It's not fairy dust, Yuri,” Victor pointed out. “You can still slip and fall on your face.”

Yeah, but if Victor skated the way Yuri had just witnessed, no one would care if he fell. He could score last in points and his performance would still be the only one anyone remembered. It was at the same time frustrating and infuriating. Frustrating, because Yuri could not compete with it – not yet anyway. And infuriating, because Victor could do even better than he already did, and he didn't show it. If there was one thing Yuri hated, it was a waste of talent.

If he was to lose against Victor, he wanted to lose against Victor at his best, not against Victor who held back. But even more than that, he hated that no one would even know what he was capable of if he didn't show it. That realization came as a surprise to Yuri, but it was the sad truth: he wanted people to see just how _good_ Victor was.

“And you're still a hypocrite,” he said. “Giving advise that you're not keeping to yourself. You're full of it.”

“I told you before.” Victor obviously made an effort to sound casual, but the tired look on his face didn't quite pull it off. “I don't need to.”

“So you're okay with history not knowing what you could do if you wanted to? You're so arrogant, I want to punch you in the face.”

“But you're not going to to do it, because it would get you expelled from the team,” Victor pointed out, unconcerned. He stepped off he ice, put on his blade guards, and stalked over to the bench to take off his skates. Yuri hadn't even put his own on yet. Since he had come in here and seen Victor on the ice, he had been unable to look away. It annoyed him greatly.

“What are you doing here?” Yuri returned Victor's earlier question. “It's the middle of the night.”

“I was bored.”

“Shouldn't you be sleeping? You think Yakov's going to go easy on you if you show up half dead tomorrow?”

“I'm fine.”

“Well, you look like shit.”

“Think Yakov's going to go easy on _you_?”

“Doesn't need to. Did the pig kick you out?”

There was no sign that Victor was irritated by the tone and the insult, of if he'd even noticed. “Yes, took my apartment at gunpoint. I must live at the rink now.”

With an irritated frown, Yuri flopped down onto the bench beside Victor. “You guys have a fight or something? What did you do?”

“I came here to get some skating done and get tired enough to fall asleep, which I now am.”

Victor pulled his phone out of his coat pocket, looked at the screen, and smiled at whatever he saw there, before typing a quick reply. “So I'm going home now,” he added. “Does Yakov know you're here?”

Yuri made a grimace and forgot what he had been about to say to Victor. “Lilia does.”

“Because you told her or because you left a message?”

Actually, Yuri had said something about leaving now into the room while Lilia had been on the phone snapping at someone and clearly distracted. But if she complained, Yuri could, and would, tell her that he had totally informed her. Not that he needed her permission or anything, But he also didn't want to be kicked out, or worse, grounded.

If Victor was bothered by his lack of reply, he didn't show it. Not that he had any right to, according to the stories Yakov had told Yuri about Victor's youth, back in the middle ages. Yuri finally finished putting on his own skates while Victor stood to leave. “I'll let the guard know I'm gone so he'll check in on you,” he stated. “Take care.”

Yuri just grunted in disgust.

 

-

 

The upcoming Olympics stressed Yuuri out more than he liked to admit. The short trip to New Zealand had helped put some distance between him and everything else, but Victor declaring his upcoming retirement had bust his little bubble of happy equilibrium, and a part of him was mad at Victor for not letting him forget that reality existed longer than he had. The rest of him was aware that this part had overreacted, and that he was an idiot.

He couldn't help feeling like Victor's retirement was his fault. On the other hand he wanted to trust him when he said his decision had nothing to do with coaching Yuuri. And at the end of the day, he would rather Victor stopped skating when he wanted to, instead of being forced into retirement when his body gave out or he got so injured so badly that he had to quit skating altogether, not just competitively.

All in all, Yuuri wasn't even that surprised. He had known that Victor would retire sooner or later, had even expected it once the season was over. But to quit right after the games... That meant that there was one more competition that he would be in, and that was it. Everything he did from now on would be the last time he did it. It meant in to weeks it would be over. The sudden reality of that was crushing.

Perhaps Victor would reconsider. Perhaps he would enjoy the games so much that he decided to stay for the rest of the season, or even for another one. Or he would mess up and score so low that he felt he could not finish his career on such a note. Yuuri definitely hoped it was the first option.

It wasn't impossible. Victor had not announced his retirement yet, and Yuuri doubted he would before the time had come, since that would be all the press would be talking about. There was room to wriggle out of this.

But if that didn't happen, then Yuuri would have to accept things the way they where. And he could. It wasn't the end of the world, or the end of their relationship, or even the end of Victor skating. It would be okay. Yuuri just hadn't been ready to accept it _now_.

He could accept, however, that he had been acting pretty childish. Wasn't he ever so lucky that Victor was horrible at holding grudges.

A few short text messages had already established that they were no longer fighting, but Yuuri still had a hard time calming down enough to sleep. He had considered, briefly, to go to the rink, but the guard would not have let him pass, and beside that he wanted to leave Victor his space. He had promised he wouldn't be gone too long, and sure enough, Yuuri heard the front door click open before the clock on the night stand showed 2 AM.

The bedroom door opened quietly a few minutes later. Yuuri debated with himself whether or not he should signal that he was awake. He and Victor needed to talk, but maybe right now wasn't the right time. So he lay still and waited until the mattress shifted with the weight of another person and Victor settled in beside him, drawing up the covers.

He waited a little more, before he could wait no longer and rolled around, wrapping his arms around Victor from behind and pressing a kiss to the back of his neck. His hair was a little damp and smelled faintly of the grapefruit shampoo he used at the rink.

Victor shifted softly and pulled Yuuri's hand to his lips to kiss his fingers, as he liked to do. They fell asleep like that.

 

-

 

The next morning, Yuuri woke up and was surprised to see that Victor was still there. It was not that late, and Victor hadn't been in bed all that long, but these days it was unusual for him to not be gone by the time Yuuri had to get up.

Half asleep, he allowed himself to enjoy the moment for a minute, before his thought processes really started and he began to wonder if Victor had arranged for his training to start later today, or if he had overslept. If he was starting late, it would have been nice if he had told Yuuri, so Yuuri would know whether to wake him now in a hurry or let him get the sleep he definitely needed.

He moved carefully and Victor did not move. He left the bed and Victor did not move. On the way back from the bathroom, he discovered that Victor's phone was on the living room table, showing low batteries and five missed calls. Yuuri plugged it into the charger – it wasn't like Victor to forget – and went back to the bedroom, where he found Victor exactly how he left him. A gentle shake didn't get much of a result. A slightly harder shake prompted a rough, unwilling sound but not much progress on the waking up front. A hand to Victor's face provided data on his temperature, which was considerably higher than it should be.

The next hour was busy. Yuuri managed to wake Victor up enough to learn that he had a sore throat and a headache and that it kind of hurt to breathe. He called a doctor over, and while waiting for the doctor to arrive he checked Victor's phone again to see that four of the missed calls were from Yakov and one from Yurio. Meanwhile, his own phone rang, but it was in the other room and by the time Yuuri got there, it had stopped. It had been Yurio, who, if Yuuri actually talked to him, would be especially insufferable to hide that he was actually worried, but Yuuri didn't mind that as much as being yelled at by Yakov, so he did call him and had Yurio pass on the happy news that Victor had gotten sick a week from the Olympic Games.

When Yuuri returned to the bedroom, he found Makkachin resting her head on Victor's hip and whining softly. Yuuri sat beside them, petting both of their heads and silently freaking out until the doctor arrived.

 

-

 

The doctor didn't need long to reassure Yuuri that Victor wasn't dying, and that he was probably going to be all right in a few days, even if he felt pretty miserable now. She left a few boxes of medication, and even though she was dealing with athletes all the time and had treated Victor many times before, Yuuri spend fifteen minutes carefully google-translating the ingredients at the back of the boxes to make sure there was nothing in there that wouldn't pass a doping test.

That was assuming that Victor would be able to compete in the first place. He assured Yuuri that he would be fine in no time, but for now, all he seemed to want to do was sleep, and it was hard for him to even wake up enough to drink some water and take his pills.

He didn't seem to be in too much pain, and under different circumstances, Yuuri might have enjoyed taking care of him. As it was, there was a very important competition coming up, and even if Victor managed to get better until then, he might just be losing too many days of practice right now. Yuuri freaked out about that, too, but silently, so as not to disturb Victor's sleep.

At least he would have a good explanation if he didn't do well in his final performance. And maybe that would make him finish the season after all...

At some point Yuuri realized with shock that he had not called anyone about not coming in to practice today, but then he remembered that no one but Victor would actually miss him. Yurio might wonder why he didn't show up, but Yurio knew what was going on and wouldn't expect him anyway.

Or so Yuuri thought, until the doorbell rang around three o'clock in the afternoon and Yurio was found standing outside the apartment, wearing his training suit underneath his coat and a woollen hat covered in snow. It had been snowing all day. Would have been a wonderful day for a walk.

“Hey,” Yurio said darkly. “Will you let me in, or what?”

“What are you doing here?” Yuuri asked, even as he stepped aside.

Yurio looked around the living room, frowning when he couldn't find Victor. “He's not catching, is he?”

“No. But that doesn't answer my question.”

“You didn't show up for practice.”

That still didn't answer Yuuri's question. “My coach is out of order.”

“Doesn't mean you can't skate. You don't need Victor to hold your hand ever step of the way, do you? Or do you think we're going to eat you if you come in alone?”

The thought hadn't occurred to Yuuri, but now that it had been brought up, it seemed like a distinct possibility.

“Victor is sick,” he pointed out. “I don't want to leave him alone.”

“He's not actively dying, is he?” Yurio eyed the bedroom door suspiciously. It was half closed, so he couldn't actually see anything useful behind it. “Do you really think you can allow yourself to slack off right before the games, just because someone else is sick?” He threw up his arms in what looked like frustration. “Why is everyone around me so overconfident that they can't even be arsed to give their best?”

That seemed to come from somewhere, but Yuuri couldn't bring himself to care enough to ask. “You've quit early today, too,” he pointed out.

“I started early. The rink's too crowded at this time.”

“Then what am I supposed to do there, if there's no room anyway?”

Yurio rolled his eyes. “I'm gone now, so you'll find your spot.”

The door to the bedroom moved just in time to spare Yuuri having to reply. It didn't move a lot, though, and what emerged from it was not Victor but Makkachin, pushing her way into the living room to check out their visitor. She greeted Yurio briefly and went back into the bedroom again, leaving the door open wide enough to reveal Victor on the bed, sprawled over both halves and half wrapped into the bedsheets. Yuuri should probably straighten them out soon, before Victor strangled himself with them.

Makkachin jumped back onto the mattress, causing Victor to stir softly. If he was waking up, Yuuri should try to make him eat something before he passed out again, he thought, momentarily forgetting their guest, who was currently staring at Victor as if he were a particularly exotic zoo animal.

Yuuri was just about to enter the room, when suddenly Victor bolted upright, wide awake and with his hair sticking in all directions. “Yuuri,” he said, sounding shocked. “You have to go to the rink!”

Yuuri wondered if he had overheard their conversation, or if he had arrived at that conclusion without any outside input. He didn't particularly care. Victor looked like a ruffled kitten.

“No, I don't,” he said patiently. “I have to take care of you.”

Victor just stared at him for a moment, and it looked to Yuuri as if he were still trying to wake up all the way. Ignoring Yurio for the moment, Yuuri walked over to him and grabbed the glass of water from the bedside table. “Drink this,” he ordered, putting the glass into Victor's hands.

Victor looked at the water for a long moment, as if he were trying to figure out what to do with it. Then he ran a hand over his face. “Yuuri,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Go practice.”

“Not happening.”

“Yes, it is. You need to stay in training, and if you don't go now, you will only start to worry about it later and work yourself into a panic right before the competition.”

Yuuri grimaced, because Victor was right, and it didn't change anything. “I'm not leaving you alone.”

“Yuuri.” Victor took Yuuri's hand and looked at him with the kind of bright smile only someone with a fever could really pull off. “It's okay! I've been sick before, and I have always been alone.”

That did actually nothing at all to make Yuuri feel better, or any more inclined to go. “That doesn't actually do anything to make me feel better,” he said. “And I'm still not going.”

“But!” Victor exclaimed brightly, as if he had just found the obvious answer to this dilemma. “I'll just keep sleeping all through the afternoon. I won't even know you're gone!” He smiled, as if waiting for the others to acknowledge that he was a genius.

“You're an idiot,” Yurio declared from the background.

Victor turned to him, and his face lit up even more. Or maybe it just lit up differently. He was sick; all his expressions were slightly off. “Yurio!” he said excitedly. “Did you come to pick up Yuuri for training?”

“No,” Yuuri snapped, the same moment Yurio grumbled something that sounded a lot like “Sure, whatever.” Yuuri glared at him.

“Yurio came because he's worried about you,” Yuuri told Victor, hoping this (obvious truth) would make Yurio go away, for as much as Yuuri found his concern touching, he wasn't actually helping right now.

He reconsidered his opinion a second later, when Yurio explained, “It would be pretty pathetic if I win against a guy who's sick and another guy who didn't get any training done. When I win against you, I'll be because I'm better than you, not because I had an advantage. So, yeah, Yuuri needs to go to the rink. And I'll stay here and make sure that Victor doesn't die or something.”

“But Yurio,” Victor said, wide eyed. “If you take care of me, I'll die for sure.”

The next second, Yuuri pushed him back down onto the mattress with one hand while using the other to throw a pillow at Yurio when it looked like he would storm into the room in a moment to make Victor's prediction a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fifteen minutes later, Victor was tucked back in and fast asleep, his dry lips slightly parted in a way that was far too attractive for his condition. Makkachin was lying beside him, snoring softly, and Yuuri was giving Yurio instructions in the kitchen, about which pills to give with dinner, what dinner should be made of, and what to do in case of emergency, which was, of course, call.

Yurio was annoyed and impatient to have him out of the door, and as Yuuri ran across the bridge in the heavy snowfall, he had to admit that he was probably worrying about this more than he needed to. It still didn't feel right to leave Victor alone right now, especially after their fight last night and the fact that they had momentarily forgotten about it rather than resolved the issue, so he was determined to keep his practice to a minimum today.

 

-

 

Yuuri returned home well after ten in the evening, feeling vaguely sore and vaguely guilty. Practice had not gone well. He had failed almost every landing, and every failure had made him more tense, which had led to more failure. This hadn't happened in forever. Yuuri realized that he had grown used to Victor being there to pull him out of that kind of downward spiral.

The smart thing to do would have been to drop the jumps for the day and focus on his spins, which also needed some work. But he had been unable to do that before he got his landings under control, and so he never had, and he never got anything else done, and when he was finally asked to leave he realized that he had stayed much longer than he had wanted to, with nothing to show for it.

The lights were on in the apartment when he came in, but it was silent, and he didn't call out for fear of disturbing anyone.

Yuuri left his shoes beside the door and walked into the living room. The TV was on, showing the pause screen of one of Yuuri's video games, and he silently swore bloody revenge on Yurio in case he had ruined the progress on one of Yuuri's own safe files. There was a half-eaten bag of chips on the table that Lilia would not approve of, but Yurio himself was nowhere to be seen.

It was late, so chances were that Yurio had simply gone home. But Yuuri suspected that he would at least turn off the Playstation if he did so, even if he decided to leave his trash around as some sort of convoluted statement. So chances were he was in the bathroom instead.

Or in the bedroom. That was also an option, as Yuuri found out when he decided to check in on Victor. Victor was once again sleeping sprawled over the sheets, and Yurio was sitting beside him with his back against the headboard and Victor's head half-resting on his lap. He was reading a magazine. When he noticed Yuuri in the doorway, he nearly threw it into his face in shock.

Yuuri was certain he had never seen this mix of embarrassment and horror on the face of a human being before. Maybe on a cat. Never on a person.

What impressed him even more than the expression, though, was the Yurio didn't immediately jump up to pretend that had never happened, because that would have disturbed Victor.

A few minutes later, Yurio was leaving. He reported that Victor had mostly slept all day, had barely eaten, but had obediently taken his medication. He did not mention the situation Yuuri had found them in. He left his trash for Yuuri to clean up.

Yuuri let it go, because he was grateful that Yurio had been here, giving him the opportunity to train, even if that had gone nowhere. And he was happy and kind of touched that Yurio had shown there how much he actually cared about Victor, if only because he'd thought no one would ever know. And also because he was secretly very amused.

It was nearly midnight when Yuuri was finally ready for bed. He was still frustrated about his training, and worried about the upcoming competitions, but it seemed a little less important when he slipped under the covers, rearranging Victor so he'd fit. Victor half-woke from his deeps slumber, but there was no need to wake him all the way, so Yuuri just pulled him into his arms and let him sleep on.

His practice had been a disaster and his coach was sick and unable to help him on the ice, but all in all, it wasn't so bad.

 

-

 

They flew to Korea two days before the first competition, checking into their rooms and getting used to the venue. Since they represented different nations, Yuuri and Victor did not get to share a room for the first time since Victor had become Yuuri's coach, and for the first few minutes after getting to his, Yuuri simply sat on the single bed in the empty room, feeling numb.

Then he went outside to meet Victor just outside the complex and go check out the area with him. It wasn't so bad.

They didn't have much of a chance to see anything, having to get back to training soon enough. Victor had missed three days of practice due to his sickness, and Yuuri's own practice in those days had been less than stellar, although only the first day was really wasted. He was glad to have Victor's guidance and support again when they were gliding across the rink in Pyeongchang, and it took him a while to realize that his own progress seemed to be all Victor was focusing on.

“What about you?” Yuuri asked, when they left the rink the first evening, and Victor made a dismissive gesture.

“I'm not all that that fit yet. Right now, not getting rusty is all I can hope for.”

That was not a very satisfactory answer, and it left Yuuri rather concerned. Victor seemed healthy enough, but he knew from experience that walking down the street and spending hours on the ice doing gruelling physical exercises were two completely different matters. “Then you should have concentrated on your own program more!”

“I have that down. And I did practice some elements from it. Don't worry about it.”

But Yuuri did worry. The next day was much the same. On the one hand he was happy Victor did not spend every minute of the day that he was not coaching Yuuri training, as he had all season, but it was also disconcerting that he didn't seem to feel the need to push himself here. It was as if he was resigned to, or even okay with, not giving his best possible performance at his last competition.

Maybe that meant he would finish the season after all!

Or maybe it just meant that he was aware of his own limits and that pushing himself past his reserves while he was still recovering wouldn't help. Yuuri didn't bring it up again. But it also didn't let him go.

Then the competition started, and Yuuri was all but overwhelmed by how big everything was. He had skated in sold-out arenas before, but this time it still felt like... more, somehow. He remembered the opening ceremony as he entered the hall. He kept thinking about all the people watching on TV who cared for figure skating only once in four years but were all eager to see them perform. See _him_ perform. Or see him fall on his ass. There were those, too, he supposed.

And there were a lot of competitors, some of whom he had never heard of and whose performances he could not predict. Chris was here, too. And Seung-Gil Lee, and Michele Crispino, and Emil Nekola from the Chec Republic, and of course Yurio and his friend Otabek. And Phitchit, who Yuuri had not even seen yet, but who's path through the city he had been able to follow through his Instagram account.

Yuuri didn't really have time for any of them. And neither did they. When they happened upon each other, they were friendly enough, and Chris was Chris wherever he went, but no one went out of their way to meet with the others. For many these were their first Olympics, and they were as intimidated by the event as Yuuri was.

Well, no. Some of them were. Most seemed determined to enjoy the hell out of this opportunity. Yuuri suspected that pressure had something to do with it. The more chances one had for winning, the less time they had to fool around.

Phitchit was clearly having the time of his life, and Yuuri really would have liked to join him in it for a moment. He hoped they'd both have the chance to stay in Pyeongchang a little longer after the competitions were over.

If Victor was nervous in any way, he did not show it. He seemed mostly focused on Yuuri's performance, but it wasn't different from any other competition. His easy routine helped calm Yuuri's nerves more than he was even aware of when they were together. He did become aware of it every time they parted for the night.

On the day of the short program, Yuuri was nervous, giddy, but also determined and focused. Misfortune would have it that he had his turn immediately before Victor, which meant that Victor rightfully couldn't pay him full attention as his coach, being busy with his own preparation. He still saw Yuuri off to the rink and told him not to worry about it, and for once Yuuri allowed himself to do exactly that: Stop worrying and simply enjoy the unconditional support he got here. He used that in his performance: this warm cushion of certainty that no matter what happened, Victor would be there by the end of it.

And he was. Yuuri finished his program with little memory of what he had been doing in the few minutes it lasted, and Victor was waiting by the kiss and cry, beaming at him. He stayed until Yuuri's score was announced and hugged him when it turned out to be impressive – high enough to beat Yurio's world record of the year before, if just shy of the new one. Yuuri was just about to snap out of his haze enough to hug him back when Yakov showed up, rather angry, and dragged Victor towards the ice.

Victor had been wearing his coat jacket over his costume. He slipped out of it on the way to the rink and entered the ice with a bright grin that Yuuri somehow knew was for him and because of him, now only flashed at the spectators for the sake of appearances. Victor waved at them and received a welcome that told Yuuri that even if many in the audience were not usually fans of their sport, they knew who Victor was.

Victor's costume was a mainly back affair with bright orange and purple elements that looked all the more striking in contrast with his silver hair. It was – though Yuuri had not noticed that until a few weeks after he'd seen it for the first time – like a negative version of his own outfit that combined a white base with blue and green elements. It looked better, though – although Yuuri was probably not the most unbiased judge of that.

The music started, and Victor began his performance. This year, both of his programs were based on instrumental pieces. The one for the short program was not slow, exactly, but serene. Playful at times, optimistic even, but with a hint of something else here and there. Maybe nostalgia, falling just short of sadness. Victor had never told Yuuri what kind of story went along with it. Yuuri had never asked. He had a story in his mind that the saw unfold every time Victor performed to the music. And he never grew tired of it, no matter how often he saw it.

To be honest, he was glad Victor had never revealed what the song was about. Yuuri imagined that every single person in the audience saw a story of their own when they watched it, but this was his.

Despite the missed practice, Victor's performance was perfect. He did not falter, did not have to leave out elements; even the quad loop went without a hitch, and the whole program was a thing of beauty. Yuuri had seen it many times before, but this was the best one so far. So he was little surprised when it was over and the score came in and Victor ended up a point and a half behind Yuuri.

Victor's program had been hard, it had been executed perfectly, and yet Yuuri had beaten him. He had given Yuuri a program that was able to beat Victor at his best, and Yuuri had done so. He had scored higher before, but always because Victor had made a mistake somewhere during is performance. This time, he had been flawless.

And Yuuri had been better.

The thought wouldn't quite sink in. At the same time, he knew that Victor had not let him win to do him a favour. His program was about as difficult as he knew how to make it. Yuuri's had the same level of difficulty when it came to the elements, but he had a quad at the very end that Victor did not have. Because Yuuri had the kind of stamina that Victor did not have. This was something Yuuri had accomplished on his own. No one had given it to him.

He was still standing by the kiss-and-cry, having been unable to tear his eyes away and leave during Victor's performance. Now Yakov sat on the bench with his usual stony face that made it impossible to know what he was thinking. There was no lecture for Victor, since there had been nothing to criticise. Meanwhile, Victor was beaming up at Yuuri as if he had never been happier.

As soon as the announcer stopped talking, he was on his feet and beside Yuuri. Took his face between his hands and kissed him and it tasted of happiness. “I am so proud of you,” he said, and Yuuri felt his eyes fill with tears and could do nothing else but hug him and hold him tight. He was probably grinning like an idiot, into the fabric of Victor's costume, but he also felt like crying. The good kind of crying. The crying that came from being so happy and grateful that he couldn't breathe.

No one had handed him this triumph, but Victor was the one who had given him the chance to take it.

Noise reached his ears a little later, and he looked up and found that they were still in the ice hall, that there were still ten thousands of people around them, and dozens of cameras, and someone else was on the ice now and halfway through their performance.

“We should probably move away before JJ's coach kills us,” Victor pointed out. Yuuri just nodded his agreement, too dazed to speak, or care about what was going on around him. They got their skates off and walked away, holding hands. Yuuri didn't know if he would be able to let go. They probably had to let Victor sleep in his room tonight after all, or pry them apart with a crowbar. He didn't even know if he would be able to care if anyone actually scored higher than him before the evening was over.

As it turned out, no one did.

 

-

 

Yurio had caught a bad day at the short program. 'A bad day' in his case meant that he had to drop one element and failed to land his Axel properly, and had finished in sixth place after everyone was done. He then tackled the free skate with the energy he was able to draw from being really angry with himself, and managed to more than make up for it with a fantastic score that many who had placed higher than him couldn't match. When all but two skaters had finished their free skate, Yurio was in second place after Seung-Gil, who had improved enormously during the previous year but looked, even though his place on the podium was now secure, like he would rather be anywhere else, whenever he bothered to look like anything at all.

Yurio looked like he was still very angry with himself. His ambition demanded that he not only participated in the first Olympic Games open to him, or did well in them, but that he won, which was already impossible. And with two competitors who had scored higher in the short program still to come, there was a chance he might even fall back to the ungrateful fourth place.

Victor could probably have calmed his worries a little if he had told him that he, for his part, did not start his free skate determined to win. But Yurio would only have been even more angry at that, and in fact Victor was not even aware of what he was feeling until he glided onto the ice to perform competitively for the last time in his life, only that he was feeling _something_.

The crowd was cheering, louder than they had for anyone else except Seung-Gil, the local hero. Victor smiled and waved, and hoped that the disappointment his fans would feel when he did not do all that well would not be as pronounced as it would have been if they'd known this was his last competition. He would have to apologize to them later, somehow. But right now, he could not think about them at all, nor did he want to.

This was his moment. All his life he had performed for other people – and he had enjoyed it, and revelled in their love, but the pressure had always been there to counteract the sheer love he had for the sport itself. It had only grown heavier as the years went by, until it became hard to remember that he had ever done this for any other reason than to please somebody else. Now, he thought as he moved to take his position at the centre of the rink, was the last chance he had to go back to the beginning. This time, he would not think about the audience, his fans, as much as he appreciated their support. He wouldn't aim to please, or shock, or annoy the RSF, or Yakov; not out of spite or dismissal, but because this, right here at the end, was _his_ moment, and there was only one person he wanted to share it with.

His outfit moved slightly in the air until he came to a stop. It consisted of loose black pants and a loose fitting shirt with a gradient from light to dark blue. There was nothing sparkly about it – it felt rather like training slacks combined with a dress shirt, and Yakov severely disapproved of it. Victor ought to dress up more, he'd argued, to compete with the fancy outfits of the other skaters, as if he needed to blind the audience with his clothes these days to make up for his skating.

Victor liked it, because it was comfortable, and fit his program, and because the blue colour reminded him of Yuuri's training jacket.

He closed his eyes now and kissed the ring on his finger before assuming his starting pose. It wasn't for luck.

The music started. Victor didn't move. It would be so easy to fall back into his usual patterns. Do it for them. Do it for the affection he had to win by doing well. Do it to make others enjoy it. But he did not want to. But it was difficult not to. And it the end, whatever he was doing this for, he had to skate in any case. So when he finally started, missing his entrance but finding another one, he discarded every thought of _having_ to skate and did it because he wanted to. And it made all the difference.

The audience was forgotten when he followed the music into a spin and then into a jump. So were Yakov and the press and any legacy he might leave this sport with.

 _'I wonder if Yuuri will like this,'_ he thought as he did a triple Loop to follow the quad.

He landed perfectly, but there was no triumph in it, just relief that no fall interrupted his flow. He felt himself transported back into his childhood, when he would dance to music in the living room, without the thought of how it would look to anyone else that dominated all his dances later in life until the night a drunk Japanese competitor pulled him into a flamenco at a banquet. The music picked up speed, and when Victor left the ice for his beloved quad flip, it felt like flying.

As he violins kicked in again, he discarded the program that he had shown before and started a series of movements that might have a place in an exhibition but would not normally be shown in competition. Simply because he felt like it; because they made his choreography feel right for the first time ever. He would not get any points for them, might even get a deduction. It didn't matter. He didn't want to win.

He wanted Yuuri to win, but that was not why he did this either, and he hoped that Yuuri would never think so. He wasn't throwing the competition in favour of anyone, let alone someone who did not need him to in order to win. He was simply enjoying himself too much to care, and he did not want this moment to be ruined by thoughts about scores, or to end.

He did not do it for Yuuri, but he was able to because of him.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he registered that he was running out of breath, but even that did not bother him. Victor turned and did a series of small jumps interrupted with steps that he had not done since he'd been a kid, excited to perform any new idea he'd had in his backyard in front of his puppy. The puppy who was still with him so many years later. Victor had an Axel lined up next, and he made it extra high for Mackkachin and then landed it forward after another half rotation. It hadn't really been planned – he'd over rotated and managed to land without falling, and now he let the excess energy carry him into a flying spin and then a combination spin just because it fit the music. Victor's original program had been completely dropped by now. He just did things because they felt right, and did not really bother to count the rotations of his jumps.

After the final Lutz of his competitive career, he realized that he was now well into the second half of his performance, and he felt it – in his stressed lungs that struggled to draw breath, in the weight of his limps, in the persistent pain in his left ankle, and in the way the world seemed to go dark around the edges. But he also felt strangely weightless. So he did a tripple Toe-tripple Loop combination, a series of quick, spinning steps, and then a moment of quiet gliding and collection as the music came nearly to a standstill, before it picked up one last time and he got a few quick steps in for speed and then had to leave to ice early for his final jump which had been supposed to be a quad Salchow but became something else altogether because the Salchow would have missed the perfect timing with the music, and that was all this was about. Victor was alone in his living room. He was alone in the rink after hours. He was in the banquet room in Sotchi, laughing as a happy boy tripped him backwards and kept him from falling. He didn't fall now either, but the song was about to end so he took the speed left from his jump into a spin and ended this performance with one hand to his wildly beating heart and the other stretched out to where he knew Yuuri to be standing by the entrance to the rink, now a blur because Victor could no longer see clearly. This pose would probably cost him points as well, but that didn't matter because it wasn't for the judges, and Victor managed to hold it for several seconds before his knees gave out and he sank to the ice, his heart beating so hard it felt like it might stop any moment.

Breathing was an issue. It actually _hurt_ , even worse than when he had been sick. Victor found himself on his back on the ice as reality slowly took him back in, the ceiling spinning above him, and the lights far too bright. He heard nothing but the blood rushing in his ears. The stadium seemed to be perfectly silent. Maybe everyone was simply too socked – too taken aback that he would throw away his chances for victory or even a good score like he just had, to bother with even the polite applause bestowed upon skater who had done really badly. If Victor had had the air for it, he might have laughed. He didn't know why.

The ice was cold and he was covered in sweat and his limps were too heavy to lift, and yet he still felt like he was floating.

All his senses seemed to be focused on his heartbeat, his breathing. When had he last been this exhausted after a performance? Had he ever? He couldn't remember, or think. He just knew that this had been too much, and that, if he did not move soon, someone would think he had passed out here. It was this thought that eventually penetrated his bubble, and when he, aching, picked himself off he ice, it felt like a journey back from a distant place. He saw Yakov stand by the kiss-and-cry, his face a frozen mask, as always. He saw Yuuri standing beside him, his jacket over his costume, ready to enter the ice for his own finale. He heard the noise.

Time to face the music.

 

-

 

Victor all but collapsed just before he left the rink, and then Yuuri had to catch him and help him to the bench along with Yakov who was ranting at him in Russian. Yuuri barely understood a word and wasn't paying attention. Neither, it seemed, was Victor.

People on skates were rushing over the ice to collect all the flowers and stuffed animals being thrown. The audience was still screaming. Yuuri was only now beginning to actually hear them, being too caught in a haze of his own. He should probably get ready for his own performance, but there was still too much going on, and Victor looked like he might pass out any moment, and Yuuri absolutely could not think of anything right now. His heart was still racing.

Technically, Yuuri had no place in the kiss-and-cry after Victor's performances, but there was an empty space to his right and he sat there and pulled Victor against him while he slowly got his breathing back under control. What Yuuri had just seen him do was something he would have struggled with himself in terms of stamina, never mind the difficulty and sheer beauty of it. And Victor did not have his level of strength, and he had only just recovered from being sick. He should never have done that. So much could have gone wrong. Yuuri suspected that that was what Yakov's rant had been about. He agreed, too.

Yet the possibility of never having gotten to see that didn't bear thinking about. Yuuri had started crying when Victor had echoed the pose from his own free skate of the previous season in the end, reaching for him across the ice, and he now found that he still hadn't stopped. He wiped the tears away unselfconsciously, not really bothered. He didn't feel like crying, actually. He didn't really know how he was feeling.

Elated, probably. And very much in love.

There was no score yet. That was good; it gave Yuuri more time to stay here before he had to go out onto the ice himself. As much as he had worried about this free skate, it was kind of hard to concentrate on it now, or to remember why it was important.

“What's taking them so long?” he wondered none to less, because this was taking forever, and he wanted to _know_. It didn't even matter all that much, because Victor had thrown so much in there that had evidently not been done for the points, but Yuuri still wanted to see what the judges were making of this. It was the best thing Yuuri had ever seen anyone do on the ice, and ever would see, and even though he knew it wasn't likely, he was still hoping that there was enough justice in the world to reflect that in the score.

“They are probably debating if that thing you showed at the end was a messed up Salchow or something else altogether,” Yakov speculated. He was looking at Victor, but speaking in English, so Yuuri could understand. “Not that it should matter much. I have never seen someone throw their chances for Olympic gold away so deliberately and spectacularly.” He looked very disapproving, but Yuuri had seen him wipe away a tear after Victor's performance had ended, and he didn't think it had been an angry one.

“Sorry,” Victor rasped. He grinned at Yakov and didn't look sorry at all.

“You're really quitting now, aren't you?” Yuuri realized. Or course Victor was. That had been a goodbye if he had ever seen one.

“Yeah,” Victor confirmed, ignoring Yakov's resigned sigh at the other side of him. “Is that okay?” There suddenly was a hint of uncertainty in his eyes, and Yuuri leaned in to kiss the tip of his nose.

“It's perfect,” he said.

They sat together for some more time, until the score finally came in and the audience, that had calmed down somewhat in the past minutes, started screaming again.

Yakov grunted. Yuuri stared at the number in surprise and awe until he felt his face break into a grin of pure delight. Beside him, Victor looked dumbfounded, until he buried his face in his hands with a groan.

“That's not what I was aiming for,” he muttered, his voice still somewhat rough.

“Then you're an idiot,” a new voice quipped in and Yurio appeared behind the bench, wearing his training suit and a scowl that didn't reach his eyes as much as he tried to get it there. “I told you that if you stopped holding back, the rest of us could just go home.”

“Good advice,” Yuuri told him.

Yurio shrugged, then looked at him quizzically. “Here's more: Get your ass out there. It's your turn, Katsudon, even if you can only look like a beginner in comparison.”

He was right. Victor had given a performance that Yuuri couldn't beat – neither in points nor in the impression it left. It would be a long time before anyone was able to beat that record. Whatever Yuuri did now would barely register with the audience as an add-on. He found, as much as he had enjoyed the thought of possibly being able to win this competition, that the sudden lack of pressure came as a relief. He was looking forward to his turn now, rather than dreading it.

He'd make that the best add-on these people had ever seen. He'd demand their attention, just to make them see how much he loved Victor, just like Victor had just done for skating, and for him.

So he nodded at Yurio and stood to take off his jacket, and left his hand on Victor's shoulder for as long as he could before he had to let him go.

Victor now looked at him with a slightly pained expression on his face. “I'm sorry,” he said. “There's no way you can win gold now.”

He looked so apologetic, but Yuuri, on the brink of winning the best silver medal of his life, only smiled, and bent down to press a kiss to his lips. “And yet,” he told him, “I feel like I just did.”

 

27 August 2017

 

 


End file.
